What really happened at Guantanamo Bay?

By Laura FlandersAlterNet

Posted on May 24, 2005, Printed on March 6, 2007

In their first article in Newsweek since the magazine
received a dressing-down by Scott McClellan, Michael Isikoff and Evan
Thomas quote Defense Department spokesman Lawrence Di Rita, who
alleges that Guantanamo commanders changed prison rules in response to
prisoner complaints about treatment of the Qu'ran. But Di Rita's claims
couldn't be further from the experience of Martin Mubanga, a recently
freed Guantanamo Bay detainee who spoke to U.S. media for the first
time this weekend.

Mubanga, a 32-year-old Londoner who was
arrested in Zambia in 2002 and taken to Guantanamo, was released
without charge in January 2005, after 33 months in captivity. He says
that offensive treatment of the Qu'ran was ongoing, even routine, over
the three years he was a prisoner. Mubanga says complaints by inmates
about the desecration of the Qu'ran fell upon deaf ears, and often
resulted in severe punishment, including pepper-spraying of prisoners.

Laura Flanders' exclusive interview with Martin Mubanga was produced by Christabel Nsiah-Buadi and broadcast on The Laura Flanders Show on Air America Radio on Sunday, May 22. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview.

Laura Flanders: Did Newsweek lie about abuse of the Qu'ran? What did you see?

Martin
Mubanga: From my own personal experience and from what I know of what
occurs in Guantanamo Bay, this is actually an ongoing thing for the
past three years, so we don't need Newsweek to corroborate or
substantiate these accusations. We who have been in Guantanamo Bay know
that these and other things occur in degradation of our religion.

You
described a situation where your cell was searched by six or seven
military police and a Qu'ran was thrown to the ground. Can you explain
why that was so offensive to you?

In our religion, firstly,
the Qu'ran is believed to be the word of God, who we refer to as Allah
in our religion. Basically the Qu'ran is supposed to be treated with
respect and most people believe that the Qu'ran should be placed in a
high place in a house or only taken with respect in a certain condition
of purification or ablution. It's never to be placed on a floor, on a
dirty floor or to be treated or to be mishandled in any way.

What did those six or seven military police do?

At
the time, there was a story going around that I was supposed to be a
top-notch fighter, as they said, and they tried to provoke me in many
ways to see what I could do. This was one of the methods that was used
to see if I would fight and I believe that's why they chose me on this
particular occasion and threw the Qu'ran on the floor.

So, they came in, they threw the Qu'ran on the floor, then what happened?

Well,
as I was saying, there were two on either side of me, holding my wrists
as I was kneeling down, and they had me in wristlocks. And one of the
three that were searching took my Qu'ran. And instead of replacing it,
to its place, he threw that on the floor... Rahul [Ahmed, a former
Guantanamo Bay detainee, who was returned to Britain on March 9, 2004]
from Tipton witnessed this and he was in the cage next to me. And he
remonstrated the soldier, the MP who did this, which they ignored. They
wanted to see if they could provoke a strong reaction from me. And
obviously, I was not able to do anything at that time.

So what happened after that?

If
you report it to the bloc MCO, like the commanding officer on the block
or to the captain, it's maybe just words. They say that they will look
into the matter and discipline will be taken, but you will not be
informed of any particular action that has been taken. So you know,
even after that, another brother from Saudi [Arabia], who is also a
British resident from South London, tried to organize various brothers
to take a stance and try to get the general -- at the time who was
General Miller -- to have placed at each and every bloc, a notice
stating that no MP should touch or search the Qu'ran. This, however was
refused point blank by General Miller and the hierarchy in Guantanamo
Bay. Subsequently, this brother and other brothers thought that they
should do some sort of actions to show their anger and to try and
reverse this decision, which resulted in many people being "earthed."

"Earthed"
is basically when the minimum of five military policemen dressed in
riot gear, with riot shields, would come in and manhandle you and put
you to the floor. On occasion, you would be pepper-sprayed, you'd be
tied and carried out. In this protest that took place, some brothers
would be beaten, for refusing to go to interrogation, for refusing to
go to shower and rec or for refusing to come out of their cell for the
search and all they asked for in return was that our Qu'ran, the book
of our religion, be treated with respect and that it not be searched or
touched or desecrated in any way.

What other repercussions were there for detainees who tried to stand up for respectful treatment of the Qu'ran?

The
officials or the hierarchies would punish us by shaving our hair or
shaving our beards, or even going to the point, there was a particular
bloc Qubec Bloc and Romeo Bloc, which is in Camp Three of Delta Camp,
where they would give shorts to brothers. In our religion, you are not
permitted to pray while your knees are uncovered. There should be a
minimum amount of bodily parts that should be covered while praying.
And they failed to respect this particular ruling in our religion by
giving our brothers shorts to wear for 24 hours. And also on other
occasions, you could lose your clothing and your mattress and your
bedding for failing to comply with camp rules. And all of this could
have been avoided if they showed respect for our religion, its concept
and its rulings.

You had plenty of time to figure it out...
can you say now, why you think the soldiers were behaving as they were?
Were they just bigots? Were they receiving orders? Did they believe
that they would get information from you if they pressured you around
your religion? How do you make sense of it?

From my personal
opinion it's about politics. Bush and those with him in the American
government and around the world were just looking for scapegoats and
someone to blame. And they had to put someone in the picture. Having
gone to the methods, or rather the extremes that they had gone to, they
had to be seen to be getting a result.

Would you say that the soldiers themselves were motivated by a hatred of religion, or what?

In
my personal opinion, I would say that some of the soldiers were naïve,
some of the soldiers were receiving orders and some had hatred for the
religion. There were a few who were quite simply following orders and
rightly or wrongly they would follow those orders because they saw no
alternative other than themselves being remonstrated or reprimanded.
You know, there were a few who had a hatred for the Islamic religion
and the Islamic way of life and people from the East, and had a general
ignorance toward the religion and anything that was not American. I
mean, there were quite a few MPs who had the attitude that simply
because they were born in America, they were better than everybody else.

Is
it possible they genuinely thought that you were in some way
responsible for killing Americans? Was that what they said to you, that
they thought you were a killer, that they felt you were a high-placed
terrorist? Would this explain their behavior?

There were a
few MPs who had that opinion of me. I think far more, for my personal
experience, that they failed to understand why I was in Cuba. Many MPs
would come to me and ask about my story and ask why I was there. Quite
a few saw me as being similar to themselves, being from the UK. But
they had a very negative attitude toward brothers from the East -- from
Saudi, from Yemen, even from Russia and China, brothers who were
classified as "Eastern Muslims" or "Muslims from the East."

How has this affected you physically, psychologically?

Well,
coming back to the UK, there are things that I still have to get used
to and that will take some time. But I am trying to put aside those
things which are causing me some pain and are causing me some distress
and some discomfort. Basically, I feel it's my duty to speak out about
the things that happened to me and happened to other people at this
moment in time, in Cuba and around the world.

Do you have physical injuries from your time?

I
have slight injury from my time, but I wish to not discuss it, but
there are some things that aren't quite right. And I am currently
seeking medical assistance for those things

And what about
politically? The effect on your political feelings and opinions or
attitudes toward the United States, toward your religion, toward this
whole so-called war on terrorism?

As far as I am concerned, I
have never been against the United States. However, I am not in
agreement with Bush and those who are with him. I think it's fair to
say that we stand at opposite sides of the fence! I don't feel that
they are the right people to be in power. I don't feel that they will
bring about any true justice, or that their motives are pure. And I
feel that the power should be in someone else's hands; someone more
worthy.

Were you a very religious person before you were picked up?

I
suppose it would depend on what you would define as being religious,
but definitely, my experience in Guantanamo Bay has made me understand
my religion more and appreciate my religion more, and made me turn to
my faith that much more.

Martin, is there anything else you
would like to say to Americans in particular who might be listening to
this, trying to make sense of what is being done in their name in
Guantanamo, in this week of discussion about Newsweek?

What
I would say basically is that, we have to ask ourselves, as
individuals, why things are being done and why certain stories are
arriving at this moment in time. I think basically that there is more
to this story than meets the eye.

You spoke outside the U.S. embassy on Friday; can you describe the scene there? How many people were protesting?

There
were a few hundred there protesting. Basically, I feel that the message
was clear and the feelings of those who participated were clear. And I
feel that there would have been many more except that people are
afraid. And people don't want to be in detention without trial, as
could be the case here. And even here we have one Muslim brother, Ahmed
[Babar Ahmed, a computer programmer who has been accused by the U.S. of
using websites to raise funds for the Taliban and other terrorists],
who is facing extradition to the United States without any evidence
being presented. So I think quite clearly that people are intimidated
and are afraid to speak out. But there are some who are willing to put
that on the line, as it were.